JERUSALEM – A Palestinian teenager who was shot by Israeli troops last week after throwing a firebomb in the occupied West Bank died Monday, the Palestinian Health Ministry said.
It was the latest in a long string of violent incidents involving Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank in the last year and a half. It came after a bloody weekend in which a settler killed a Palestinian man and a Palestinian gunman killed an Israeli security guard in Tel Aviv.
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The Palestinian official news agency Wafa reported that Ramzi Hamed, 17, was shot near the West Bank settlement of Ofra, near his hometown of Silwad north of Ramallah.
Fathi Hamed, the boy's father, told The Associated Press that his son was shot by Israeli troops early last Wednesday after throwing firebombs at soldiers operating near Silwad.
The Israeli military said “it appears” that Hamed had thrown the firebomb toward the settlement's front gate. It provided security camera footage of what it said was the incident, in which a young male is seen getting out of a vehicle, throwing a firebomb and speeding away in a car after an explosion. It was not immediately clear how close the explosion was to security forces or when the teen was shot.
Violence has surged across the northern West Bank with the rise of shooting attacks by Palestinian groups against Israelis, near-daily arrest raids by the Israeli military, and growing attacks by extremist Jewish settlers.
On Monday, the Israeli military said troops arrested 17 Palestinians across the West Bank overnight. Israeli media reported that five of those arrested were suspected of involvement in clashes with Israeli settlers on Friday that left one Palestinian dead.
Israeli settlers attacked a Palestinian village in the West Bank on Friday. They set fire to cars and fired on Palestinians who threw stones at them. Two Israeli settlers suspected of killing 19-year-old Palestinian Qusai Matan remained in police custody on Monday.
The surge in fighting is one of the worst between Israelis and Palestinians in recent decades. More than 160 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire this year in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, according to a tally by The Associated Press.
Israel says most of those killed have been militants, but stone-throwing youths protesting army raids and innocent bystanders have also been killed.
At least 30 people have been killed in Palestinian attacks against Israelis so far this year.
Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war, along with the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem. Palestinians seek those territories for their hoped-for independent state.